Link Building SEO
- March 20, 2014
- Bradley Taylor
When reading any literature about modern day search engine optimization (SEO), the term ‘link building’ is more likely than not, prominently used. While it is obvious that link building is critical to a website’s search results ranking, it is a concept that may not be well understood. That being said, lets take a look at what exactly link building is and how to use it most effectively.
According to Google, the most popular and standard setting search engine out there today, the “quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating.” To break it down further, links are essentially a connection from one website to another and search engines consider a website’s quality and relevance by rating its links to other sites. To delve deeper, it is important to know that not all links are created equal.
The more popular a site is, the higher a link to this site is ranked so these type of links are very important. While having “popular” site links should be a priority, these links also need to be on-topic to your particular website. For example, if your website is promoting a law firm, having links to sites such as the state bar association is given a higher ranking than a site for a restaurant or clothing store.
Another important consideration when it comes to link building, is the need to avoid spam sites. Anyone who has spent any significant amount of time online knows that there are an endless number of useless or spam websites. In order to properly rank quality, websites are ranked higher by search engines using the “TrustRank” measurement. The higher trust ranking a site is given, the more valuable a link it becomes. Search engines also looks as a site’s links as a whole and puts it into a “link neighborhood” or in other words rates a site based on the other sites it is linked to. If your site is linked to a number of spam sites, your site will be rated as spam as well by various search engines and will drop in ranking.
Finally one of the biggest things to take into consideration when using link building to promote a site’s SEO is the placement of anchor text. The use of this type of link is one of the biggest indicators for a search engine to determine its site ranking. Anchor text is the text used to identify an external link. By using this type of link building effectively, one can significantly boost their relevancy ratings.
Link building is a complicated and intricate SEO practice. Using the information provided above along with keeping freshly updated links and working in social media aspects to one’s website can build Page Rank and increase search placement.
